Netflix’s The Killer review: David Fincher - Michael Fassbender thriller is familiar but watchable

Michael Fassbender dissolves into the role of a detail-obsessed murderer with a sociopathic edge in The Killer. (Screen grab/YouTube/Netflix)

“I serve no god or country”, the protagonist of Netflix’s The Killer says, while narrating the private manifesto of his vocation. This happens over a sequence that catapults into haste before turning into professional hazard. The Killer is familiar territory in cinema’s long-held obsession with men who unsentimentally dispense death, as a means to vague ends. There is no streak of justice, moral curiosity nor does this format of cinema intend to meet at the intersection of social commentary. This is obsession, at times for obsession’s sake. Naturally, David Fincher’s The Killer feels awfully similar, even derivative, in a long list of dead-eyed assassins who have graced celluloid with a certain metallic lustre. It’s the opaqueness of it all, the at-arms-length quality of these men that makes them fascinating. To which effect, though The Killer isn’t the director’s finest work, it still has the suaveness, sincerity and meticulous design that you’d expect from a Fincher film and a Michael Fassbender performance.

Fassbender returns to acting after a long break, as the unnamed assassin we see and hear this film through. He is clinical, unsparing and obsessive about his methods. Like many hitmen of yore, he follows a set of principles, a dictum that sets the tone for what everything means, and what it definitely doesn’t. Empathy is eroded, violence trivialized and life crunched to a crumb from its original form, as the wiry figure goes around dimly lit rooms and dank alleyways ushering people to vengeful ends. The plot circles around revenge. After a job goes awry because he kills the wrong person, our killer becomes the subject of a reactionary hit job. The hunter, as cinema’s oldest pivot, becomes the hunted.

After his home and his partner, stacked a long way away in The Dominican Republic are attacked, our protagonist climbs up the food chain, unleashing a meticulously observed response that though procedural and dull in its pace, feeds off of Fassbender’s eerie frame. The actor has always been a physical performer, and here he dissolves into the role of a detail-obsessed murderer with a sociopathic edge. He walks around operatically, as if haunted and somewhat numbed by the ordinariness of everything around him. It’s impressive as a standalone performance, and though the actor seems born and built for the profile, he is given an unfortunately one-dimensional graph to tread.

Given this is a David Fincher film, there are some trademark touches. The camera rarely wobbles and has its eyes set on dimly lit subjects. The attention to detail, the sound design is emphatically immersive. A chase sequence on a two-wheeler through a barely lit city, practically plays out across the eardrums. An adrenaline-pumping fight sequence within a living room, has the audacity of a big-budget actioner. It’s jaw-dropping, but also one of the rare moments in which this film pulls up its cuffs and really has a go. Which makes you wonder if the loquacious voiceover, the enforced minimalism and the oneness of this genre piece even merits its distanced, self-appeasing sense of virtue. The Killer doesn’t want to say much, except it kind of also does.

'The Killer' will leave you moderately entertained, somewhat fascinated by the seductive ways Fassbender holds pistols (yes that) but also underwhelmed.

The body count is emphatic, some of the conversations tepid, as people who pull the trigger and the ones who die by it, wait in anticipation or what can only be termed as mild anxiety. There is a scene-stealing Tilda Swinton cameo by the end of it all but by then death has become periodic and inessential to the point that it can only really be witnessed, as opposed to mourned or contemplated.

Tilda Swinton in The Killer. (Screen grab/YouTube/Netflix)

There is plenty to like about Fincher’s films, even the ones that divide opinion. Much like the clinical nature of the assassin he captures here, he is obsessive about how he thinks and makes cinema. On some level, this is a continuation of a self-serving idiom of storytelling, one where he does something purely because it interests him. The act of baring its specificities to the public, count as part of the privilege of watching him do it. It’s voyeurism in some sense, but it’s also fascinating to see conviction unfurl through stale material. Maybe even come unstuck against its ancient designs. That said, it’s still fascinating to watch a maverick actor and master director collaborate for what you’d hope isn’t the last time.

The Killer is now streaming on Netflix.